My Hungry Buddy helps people stay healthy

Post ten

By Marie Good

Speaking with a peer member about my proposition allowed me to gain an idea into how she understood my proposition and feedback was received into the ways she felt the proposition could be improved to increase it’s chances of success. Her feedback allowed me to reconsider, and consequently, completely redesign my proposition, as she, as well as my tutor bought up some interesting points that I had overlooked or not put too much thought into. These were the following:

• What would the main influence or take home value be
• Be more specific about the target audience or it may be hard to influence everyone
• How could you create a more obvious motivation to get people involved
• How could you create surprise in the minds of the audience to influence a bigger impact
• Could this turn into a game somehow

Taking this feedback into consideration lead me to completely scrap my original idea and come up with another, that had been highly influenced by my earlier research. I also realised this idea was, in reality, less of a design solution to educate and more of an event for entertainment. The line I wanted to draw was somewhere in between this crossover.

As mentioned before, the key insight from my research that assisted me to create this new design proposition came from an interview with one of my classmates who disclosed thoughts on the stereotype of being unhealthy as someone who is overweight. I found this interesting at the time because of existing ideas I had about metabolic and genetic differences affecting the breakdown, distribution and storage of energy cells, thus affecting the visual side effects of consumable intakes. This insight prompted me to ask myself the question, what if the elements affecting weight gain were the same for everyone and solely determined by the nutritional breakdown of consumables placed into the body? I also drew on research surrounding the power of edutainment; which is education taught through the emergence of technology, particularly games such as phone applications or game consoles. Here, I was able to create the basis for my game proposition and My Hungry Buddy was born.

Revised proposition

My hungry buddy is a service design and part generative system that aims to educate people on their food choices in an attempt that the consequences of physical weight gain or loss and potential future health problems may influence the individual to make wiser food choices.

My Hungry Buddy provides a personal logging system and education platform on eating behaviours and encourages people to make sensible nutritional choices. The game works firstly by the user creating a customised avatar and profile of themselves, including height, weight, age, body type (if known), and basic activity level. The game then creates their character and uses this information to calculate intake requirements and basic vitamin requirements. The user then logs their food intake by meals, like in the existing app, My Fitness Pal and this information is then placed against the intake requirements and influences the user’s avatar by either placing weight on or off the character. It also analyses the meal for nutritional or vitamin imbalances and warns the user of potential future health complications if this type of eating persists.

In addition, the user has the opportunity to scan barcodes while shopping and place these into their intake to see if a particular food is healthy or not healthy. They have the opportunity to store this information of items in a catalogue called a ‘food pantry’ for future, quick go to uses and can also share this information on a forum platform provided, to connect with other users.

My Hungry Buddy hopes to educate solely on nutritional requirements and therefore does not take fitness into account at this stage of the proposition process, however there is potential to include this in the future. Edutainment in this regards, is a private journey by participants that can have the power to promote healthy choices and educate on healthy living.

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The five W’s and unlimited potential

Post nine: Visual documentation of the brainstorming session

By Marie Good

Before I could work on developing a design proposal or situating my design statement in a decisive way, it was essential for me to firstly understand all the elements of my target audience involved. The following questions had to be asked, with my responses included below.

WHO

Consumers; the general public; particularly people with little knowledge of the foods they consume or people with a medium / strong interest, yet not qualified as a reliable source of information. It also affects the manufacturers and producers of foods.

WHAT

There is a general lack of awareness or desire to be aware because of the complexity and boring structure of current information. Also potentially a lack of accessibility to information or healthy options.

WHERE

Every time a consumer purchases or consumers. In shopping malls, supermarkets, cafes, their own kitchen etc.

WHEN

When shopping, when hungry, when preparing food.

WHY

Nutritional information currently is not desirable to read. People would rather read an unreliable blog post or watch a reality cooking show than learn the fundamental chemistry of profile of nutrition.

After this, I was able to work on creating a design statement which I discussed with my peers. This discussion proved very helpful for myself, in understanding if what I was investigating made sense to others, instead of only myself. They even informed me of some areas I could look for information on my topic.

Next I took all the suggestions and feedback I had received and started brainstorming potential design solutions. The important part here was to think as big as I could and create ideas not limited to my own available resources for reality but the skills and funds featuring a more collaborative approach. I asked myself, if my own funding and skills were limitless, what could I achieve to create change. This thinking pattern created some very far-fetched, yet potentially extremely effective design solutions, as well as some more grounded and realistic ideas. In order to create some structure out of my chaotic jhand generated storm, I recreated this by computer intervention. The end map is pictured here below.

This process of collaboration was highly effective in this instance as the reactions of others and their feedback, enabled me to understand if my thinking made sense or was of value to those other than myself. Their suggestions for further research as well, allowed me to uncover more sources of information that hadn’t even crossed my mind.

A Design Response for Type 1 Diabetes

 Post 8 by Lucy Allen

The ability to brainstorm and discuss in a collaborative group throughout this process has been so beneficial in my own discoveries but also in broadening my understanding in different areas of ‘Obesity and Healthy living’ through the work of other group members.

Identifying possible issues to respond to required me to draw upon my many weeks of research and findings to extract the fundamental issues at play in the realm of Type 1 Diabetes.

Identified Issues

• There is wide-spread confusion and lack of education as to the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes
• People living with Type 1 Diabetes often feel misunderstood and that there is a lack of peer and personal support when it comes to living with the disease
• Australia has a history of attempted and failed government strategies when it comes to Type 1 Diabetes. There is currently no government strategy in place to further educate, inform and prevent Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes
• There is a lack of empathetic connection and understanding within the interconnected stakeholders in regards to Type 1 Diabetes
• Due to a lack of understanding about Type 1 Diabetes there is a stigma and stereotype associated with Type 1 Diabetes that is mostly incorrect and misunderstood

 Using the framework of who, what, when, where and why I was able to refine these issues into a more specific issue statement from which I could begin to brainstorm potential emergent responses.

Refined Issue Statement: 

“People living with Type 1 Diabetes feel a lack of understanding, connection and acceptance in current Australian society”

By refining and defining my issue statement I was able to begin brainstorming potential emergent responses to this issue as explored in INSERT LINK. From this group brainstorming session I discovered that the most obvious response to my issue would be that of a service. I found however that the few visualisation practice and generative system ideas we brainstormed were a lot more exciting to me than that of a service design. I think creating a response that incorporates some aspect of visualisation practice and a generative system has the potential to result in a much more innovative and impactful outcome to this issue.

Proposal

My issue tackles three important but different feelings currently experience by those living with Type 1 Diabetes; understanding, connection and acceptance. I propose the design of a exhibition that would be curated through a generative system and result in a data visualisation. Throughout this process there would be the opportunity to connect people living with Type 1 Diabetes, educate society on the disease and raise awareness of Type 1 Diabetes.

I propose the development of a set of postcards, sent to people living with Type 1 Diabetes nationally. Each postcard would require a different response from these individuals, some possible responses are brainstormed below:

These postcards would then be collected and curated into a public exhibition that not only acts as a visual representation of what it is like to live with this disease but also a data visualisation of living with Type 1 Diabetes. This exhibition would bring together sufferers, uniting them through the process as well as opening up a discussion about Type 1 Diabetes, educating and raising awareness about the disease. I would hope through this process and exhibition that it would attract media attention and bring this issue to the attention of government bodies, enabling a discussion to be started at a higher level and action to be taken and carried through by the Australian Government.

 

You can’t handle the truth, but how about a pop up?

Post eight

By Marie Good

Collaborative group work has played an essential role in the discovery and exploration of my understanding into the issue that is obesity and healthy living. It has allowed for an accepting space where a knowledge bank was allowed to be created based on different experiences, insights and conducted research points that group members had acquired. During a recent brainstorming session, this and also the ability to communicate ideas verbally helped me to discover possibilities and to create a proposal.

 

The possibilities discovered included:

• Food allergies, particularly in response to food additives and man made chemicals, are not being highlighted as an important consideration in the design spaces and marketing environments products exist in.
• Edutainment has an important role to play in the future of humanity and how we relate to and perceive the world and who we are in it.
• People are generally uninterested in taking the time to discover how food properties and their chemical make up can influence bodies in particular ways.
• There is a general lack of understanding on where to seek qualified, experienced and reliable advice for the issues of healthy living and obesity.
• Our information receptors are at over capacity when it comes to ‘fad diets’ and fad ways of conducting healthy living, that we become overwhelmed and undereducated about real issues.

Through my possibilities I was able to create a problem statement for further design responses to be investigated as a solution to influence change.

Problem Statement

Design a way of assisting people in understanding and building awareness about the nutritional breakdowns of consumables.

Proposal

I have realised the main issue within obesity and healthy living appears to be a lack of education and a lack of attitude to learn, because of an oversaturation of inaccurate information and a tried and tired nutritional panel that is unexciting and inefficient to read.

I aim to create a service design, which will essentially act off the back of the success of pop up restaurants and food trucks. I propose to create a travelling restaurant space that serves food and drink products in response to where the patron is sitting in that restaurant space. The restaurant space will be separated through aesthetic style based on degrees of nutrition and the balance of a meal, ranging from very bad to very good. In order to gather an interest from the general public in such an event, I propose working with and gaining the participation of well known health, fitness and nutrition actors and developing a three phase campaign; 1 – tease. 2 – excite. 3 – sustain. The results themselves, will educate participants to develop an awareness and conscious attitude towards the nutritional value of their food.

‘Big now, dead later,’ – Steroids

Post 7: Issue mapping

By Marie Good

Steroids by Magin 2016

Controversy: noun; a lot of disagreement or argument about something, usually because it affects or is important to many people (Cambridge dictionary 2016).

When it comes to living and the issues that affect us all, we are placed into a position of a passive or aggressive stance. As humans, we feel strongly about subjects such as obesity and healthy living and because of this, create controversy over and within many areas surrounding it.

Recently during a class exercise, I had the opportunity to map out actors of controversy with regards to this topic and zone in on a particular area of investigation. My group and I decided to focus on the area of performance enhancement supplements, recognising it within our first map of controversies, as a subject each group member had some knowledge about but thought might be interesting to explore. We broke this off onto one known performance enhancing drug, steroids, to investigate further in detail.

Steroid are by nature, a performance-enhancing drug, particularly found in the areas of, but not limited to, bodybuilding, strength conditioning, endurance sports and performance athletes.

We recognised six main categories we could examine closer to develop a detailed insight into the actors involved in this controversial subject, being: politics, associates, value alignments, capabilities, hierarchies, issues and challenges. From here, it was essential and crucial towards our process to involve each member’s thoughts and ideas as we all had different knowledge levels, experiences and therefore insights into steroid actors.

On looking over our end map and findings, the main issue with steroid use is formed on the basis of drug stability in regards to quality and sustainability of the individual’s life. I can identify a possibility that in order to change the minds of individuals in this area, education, potentially in the form of a health and fitness, virtual reality edutainment app could be developed or other means of education in perceiving our future selves with regards to now. This unfortunately seems to be a contradictory area within the minds of young people particularly, where by the mentality they have is focused on the idea of fun now, responsibilities later. This way of living is not sustainable to themselves, their friends and families or the communities around them.

 

Reference list

Cambridge dictionary, 2016, Controversy, date viewed 1 September 2016, < http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/controversy &gt;.

Magin, R. 2016, steroids, date viewed 1 September 2016, < http://ryanmagin.com/go/new-steroid-poormans-nobs/ >.

Twittersphere suggests fast food can actually make us healthy

Fast food, fast change by Lea Peck 2015

Post 6: Data scraping

By Marie Good

Twitter is a social media platform where users can subscribe (or follow) other users to stay connected with their updates and posts. In order to access most functions, such as posting you, the user must have an active account and the technology to connect via app or an Internet platform. One of the significant and most commonly used features is posting written updates on your thoughts or activities, which creates a communicative and relaxed tone of conversation, unless, of course, controversial subjects are the targets of play. In this case people can use freedom of expression and freedom of speech to ‘vent’ their opinions and affirm their identity in a way.

One feature in particular that I have utilised, as a tool to analyse hashtagged material with specific keywords relating to obesity and healthy living is the advanced search function. Using Google Spreadsheets and a twitter scraper application, I decided it would be interesting to look for the usage of two words – preservatives and organic. These two terms relate strongly to my desired area of investigation and provided some interesting results for analysis.

Through my analysis, three main take away points became obvious.

1. Organic food is expensive, unaffordable for the majority of people and a heavily marketed advertising term.
2. Excitement for fast food chains that switch to products that don’t use preservatives is rising.
3. Many of those tweeting about switching to organic, or eating foods without preservatives are health professionals or have some sort of education/work interest in the area

After sorting through only a small section of the responses received, it became significant to note that the use of ‘organic’ was predominantly part of advertisements for products and services, instead of use in general conversation. For example, these tweets below display how marketing has latched onto the power of a niche market to influence consumers on a broader spectrum.

L: Skin loving luxury by Organicfelicia 2016. R: Organic matcha green tea by Ecomugsstore 2016.

Not only does it appear that this is the case but also that due to this, many people associate expense and affordability concerns with organic products. One tweet displayed below, details the anguish and disgust of high prices on organic produce.

Organic is so expensive by Mamakaexo 2016

LOL do you even know what minimum wage is by Ayershole 2016

On the other hand, we see joy and excitement about a recent decision by McDonald’s Canada to adopt preservative free methods of cooking within their chicken nugget range. This tweet was retweeted numerously and recurred throughout my search hundreds of times. This shows how people tend to accept their love of fast foods, while also admitting, although not directly, of knowledge about the negative health properties of chicken nuggets. This idea made me reflect of my interview conducted recently where my interviewee suggested fast food establishments need to adopt small changes in order to influence a healthier and more sustainable future.

Mc_D Canada preservative free by 20YS 2016

The last area I found provoking in my search was not what, but who were discussing these keywords in their tweets. It appeared the majority of tweeters had dealt directly or do deal directly with the health industry, as businesses, qualified health, fitness or nutrition personally or/and the more general health and fitness advocates. This almost seems to suggest that those willing to use these terms essentially need to have some interest or stake in the obesity and healthy living area. This then presented me with an issue for further investigation.

I believe here, the challenge for design in this area lies in its ability to influence the general public who are not necessarily interested in the chemical composition of foods of product. How can design create change, or increase the accessibility of information so that is it placed in an easy to understand format that the user wants to access. Potentially through edutainment technologies or awareness campaigns supported by major fast food organisations or product manufacture and distribution houses. Through this means, the information is placed in a house that is already furnished with a collective and consistent audience who, according to my data scrape findings, do actually care about what they put into their body when it is brought to their attention that a positive change has been made.

Reference list

Ayershole, 2016, ‘LOL do you even know what minimum wage is,’ 4 September, twitter post, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/Ayershole/status/770449656568426497 &gt;.

Ecomugsstore, 2016, ‘Organic matcha green tea,’ 4 September, twitter post, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/EcoMugsStore/status/772580048444329984 &gt;.

Mamakaexo, 2016, ‘Organic is so expensive,’ 4 September, twitter post, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/mamakaexo/status/770398230865731584 &gt;.

Organicfelicia, 2016, ‘skin loving luxury,’ 4 September, twitter post, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/flwrgardengifts/status/772579947802046464 &gt;.

Peck, L. 2015, Fast food, fast change, YouTube, date accessed 3 September 2016, < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBCFBEIXC0w >.

20YS, 2016, ‘Mc_D Canada preservative free,’ 4 September, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/20YS/status/772172835406110720 &gt;.

Issue mapping for sedentary lifestyle

Blog post 7. Issue mapping

Written by Hyunjoung You

In week 5, our group shared each thought about obesity, and we created mapping for the actor in controversy, which is related to obesity issue. It was opportunity to expand and obtain the knowledge about controversial issue of obesity. We are divided into 5 sections: people, emotion, behaviour, barrier, and environment. The mapping is shown below:

Mapping for the actor in controversy

 

After finished the above mapping, I narrowed down the topic to ‘sedentary lifestyle’. I found ‘Active lifestyle’ as opposite side to my topic, and I figured out the controversy between sedentary lifestyle and active lifestyle by classifying into 6 categories: people, emotion, behaviour, barrier, environment, and society / network. While I created this mapping, I recognized there are lots of associates and causes of sedentary lifestyle. Moreover, I discovered the associates were busy modern people, disabled people, and people who have sedentary work. This means that busy lifecycle and their environments bring about sedentary lifestyle except disabled people. Therefore, I would like to do further research about work environment since I have thought it is hard to do physical activities after hard work. I believe that their workplace environment is the most effective solution to people escape from sedentary lifestyle. Hence, I decided to make actor mapping using sedentary work.

Controversy mapping

To create actor mapping, I should think about different aspects of sedentary work: trigger, capacities, associates, politics, value alignments, weak connections, hierarchies, issues and challenges.

Actor mapping

It helped me to organize diverse factors surrounding sedentary work properly: the associates are related to sedentary work, the results by sedentary work, and issues and challenges. Especially, issues and challenges was useful aspect to come up with the possible actions to change. Also, it made me consider the barriers would come along to practice these possible actions. Here are possible solutions to sedentary work:

– The companies provide the employees with some programs or work environment to promote their physical activities such as morning yoga program, team sports activities, and standing desk.

– Creating info graphic poster to help the employees being aware of the importance of physical activities to prevent from being obese.

– Short animation or visual narrative about how sedentary lifecycle affects negatively to people.

Twitter Archiver for collecting data

Blog post 6. Scraping the web for data

Written by Hyunjoung You

 

As Media Access Australia (n.d) states:

Twitter is a popular social networking tool that allows users to send a short, mostly text-based message up to 140 characters long known as a ‘tweet’. These tweets are then published online and can be publicly viewed. Twitter users can post their own tweets, follow the tweets of other users or contribute to a wider online discussion based on a particular topic or event.

Twitter is fast personal communication. People can share personal insights on something with other people. Moreover, they can follow the celebrities and send feedback on any events such as a live television show. It is also commonly referred to as a short web log (blog). Social Media News Australia reported that Twitter becomes Australia’s most popular social media microblogging tool with approximately 2.8 million unique visitors in Australia and over 300 million users worldwide in the early of 2016.

My research process 

My specific topic is the association between sedentary lifestyle and obesity. Therefore, I searched using keyword ‘Obesity’, ‘Fat’, ‘Sedentary’, and ‘Lifestyle’ at first.

Twitter Archiver Research 1 – #obesity #fat #sedentary #lifestyle

The data that came out on the list was exactly same as what I though about. However, as you can see the above screen shot, only one tweet showed since I used too specific keywords. I realized that I needed to use more general and suitable words to collect useful data.

Twitter Archiver Research 2 – #obesity #fat

This is the result by researching using keywords of ‘obesity’ and ‘fat’. I could receive lots of personal insights about obesity, but it was hard to find the information what I looked for because keyword was so broad to bring about specific data. Nevertheless, there were few results were related to my topic. After this, I searched using keywords ‘lifestyle’ and ‘office’ as well; however, it was not enough to gather useful data. Hence, I moved on Twitter search engine.

As you can see the above images, I typed three words ‘fat’, ‘sitting’, and ‘office’, which are more related to my topic. Many tweets came out, and they all indicated that sedentary work made them being fat. It shows that many people already recognize sedentary lifestyle is associated with obesity, but all tweets were their feelings about being fat like sad or anger. There were no any solutions or ideas for that issue.

 

While I scraped data via Twitter Archiver and Twitter search engine, I found how they were useful tool to discover information what I looked at using simple keywords. Twitter Archiver offered the list, which included the keywords I typed. It helped me to recognize what kinds of issues people share and discuss nowadays. Also, it provided wider knowledge that is related to obesity issue. Overall, I could have a look different personal insights and opinions about specific issues. It is really good to know them as a designer because we have responsibility to act for people needs and build the solutions to solve problems. Therefore, it is appropriate tool to scrape data to understand specific issue and personal insights.

 

Reference

Media Access Australia, n.d. ‘Twitter’, viewed 4 September 2016, <https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation&gt;

Interview and Probe about the association between environment and obesity & healthy living

Blog Post 5: Approaches to design for change, design-led ethnography

Written by Hyunjoung You

 

I have conducted the interview about obesity & healthy living to my specific issue to my interviewee in the class. There are five findings from this primary research.

 

1.  Interesting issue about obesity & healthy living

The interviewee was more interested in right diet than other issues that are related to obesity and healthy living. She thought that people do not have enough knowledge what diet is good for their health and preventing from being obese. Therefore, she believed the early education is important so people can use to have proper diets.

Through her answer, I realized people were aware of the importance of right diet. However, there are no opportunities that people learn which diet is better properly. I thought children education would be helpful to solve future problem is being obesity to children.

 

2. Major contributors of obesity & healthy living

Modern culture & busy life

The interviewee said it is one of major contributors to obesity & healthy living. Many people do not have time to do exercise, and cook at home. Today people prefer eating outside or buying takeaway food due to convenience. Also, some people pursue their convenience too much; even though the distance is short, some people choose driving car rather than taking walk.

Advertisement industry

The interviewee talked about food advertisement as well. She could see lots of soft drink like Coca Cola or junk food ads, but it is hard to find the advertisements for alcohol, soft drink or food by healthy companies.

Education

She pointed out the lack of education about right diet in childhood. Children education is important to prevent from being obesity. She believed that eating habit could make people being healthier or not.

Three contributors that the interviewee came up with obesity & healthy living were all appropriate. Besides, I found three of them are related to my issue. It seems like busy life tend to make people living sedentary lifestyle. In addition, the environment they live in has more unhealthy food shops than healthier food shops. Therefore, it might bring about a limited choice of diets to people.

 

3. Active urban design prevents obesity or not

My interviewee was not sure if active urban design could prevent obesity. However, she was certain that it could help public health in general; more green spaces and better recreational areas can encourage people to exercise more. She also gave me the example that is dedicated urban bicycle lanes are really helpful for people who are thinking about cycling especially in Australia, as it can be dangerous to cycle on roads. Additional parks and green spaces are also good for promoting the community to do physical activities.

My interview has a broad understanding of the association between our environment and public health. This shows how our environment impacts on our health.

 

4. The possible opposition to active urban design

The interviewee thought there would probably be opposing views of creating active urban design since everyone would always have different opinions. However, she did not think that the disagreement was based on whether or not they wanted to have health promoting urban design. The disagreement might be going to be about what kinds of urban design in specific that is needed in the area. She said there would be concerns, for example, do we want to build a cool playground for kids or build a public gym? She was sure this was the type of opposing opinion happened all the time.

I realized that I overlooked the thing that my interviewee pointed out. It was nice time to think about other issues about this solution.

 

5. The ideas for preventing obesity

She mentioned about children education again, but she thought urban design and children education could be connected. For example, growing plants or fruit by children in specific areas to help them have right diets.

I thought it was good idea combining both ideas together. Hence, children can be familiar to eating vegetables and healthy food, and some parts of urban design create by public.

 

Probe

After the interview, due to my issue that I have looked at so far is about the association between environment and obesity & healthy living. Therefore, I wondered the environment around her in particular to food industry. I asked she usually cook at home or not, and then, she said that she normally ate food outside. Therefore, I asked her to capture the map of her place to see what kinds of food industry are located in.

The map around building 6 and interviewee’s house (http://maps.uts.edu.au/map.cfm)

 

This image was from my interviewee, and she put the red lines on the place where she normally went to eat. She also mentioned there are some missing shops like KFC, sushi shop, and lots of takeaway food shops between building 6 and central station such as Thai, Chinese, and sandwich shop, and so on. She lives in UTS accommodation that is why she usually has food around there. She added there are not much healthy food shops compares to sugary or junk food shops; therefore, she does not have many choices to choose healthier foods.

Through this probe, even though I looked at the food environment of small area, I could find that many people are already exposed to those kinds of food industry. The way to prevent it is only a change of our environment for people. We need to choose healthier choices easily in our environment, and it can be happened by our acts. It might be one of our responsibilities; everyone should be aware of it, and act now.

After primary research, I could see what is difference between primary research and secondary research. When I used secondary research to write previous blog posts, secondary research includes existing research, and involves analysis or literature reviews. However, primary research, especially conducting interview and probe by one person was personal. Thus, I could get diverse perspectives of the issue by different people; they have different opinions and ideas, so it is really helpful to come up with the thoughts that I could not have.

Mapping and image archive

Blog post 3. Mapping and image archive

Written by Hyunjoung You

 

Group mapping of Obesity & Healthy living in class

 

Environment we live in (Stakeholders / Values) mapping in class

During the class, our group created the mapping for issue, which is related to obesity and healthy living. Also, we made stakeholders mapping; we divided into 2 sections for stakeholders like human and non-human. This exercise helped to build the knowledge about diverse issues are associated with our topic (obesity and healthy living). In later class, we wrote down the words are linked to our topic. We shared each group words, and checked what they were interested in the words. For our group words, the most interesting word was ‘Active design’, and then, ‘Healthcare professional’, ‘Public health’, ‘Environment’, and ‘Healthy lifestyle’, and so on. I realized most of words are related to my specific issue that is the association between active urban design and obesity. Therefore, if I keep looking at this issue and trying to make better ideas, it would be definitely interesting to many designers and design students. In addition, there are many interesting words from other groups what I could not come up with even few words describe my issue properly. Thus, it was useful exercise to get the point of what I have to go with my issue.

 

10 Image Archive

Image 1. Put the Smartphone down: social media use and sleep disturbances linked

First image includes the guy who grabs his mobile cannot fall in sleep properly. This describes using smart phone for a long time brings about sleep disturbance. Nowadays, modern people often use social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, etc. They use their mobile to keep checking social media, and it is still happened before people go to bed. Deep sleep is necessary to good health; therefore, this image shows technology is also one of distractions to healthy living.

 

Image 2. Dove Real Beauty campaign

In post 1, I already have written about the issue, which is related to this image. This image aims to women have the confidence with their natural bodies. However, the article what I read in post 1 insists that ‘real’ from that slogan could be problem because there are no standard for normal and real body. Also, it highlights these kind of campaign might lead to negative effect on public’s lifestyle and eating behavior. Therefore, this image is controversial even the purpose is good.

 

Image 3. Disease trigger

Right diet is one of significant factor to healthy living. As you can see this image, today many young girls have wrong beauty standard, for example, skinny is prettier. They become being very self-conscious, and they cannot be satisfied with them. It causes eating disorder such as overeating or anorexia; and this image is one of example showing anorexia successfully.

Image 4. Are You Eating Your Feelings?

The person eats the cookies with the different feelings in this poster. It shows people can overeat due to their feelings especially when their feelings are sad, tired, stressed, depressed, lonely, or anxiety. As you can the words in the cookies, all words represent negative feelings. The poster emphasises that people should stop overeating by bad feelings; they should find other appropriate solutions except overeating to make them feel better.

Image 5. How Coca-Cola, Britvic and Innocent are tackling the sugar issue

This image shows how soft drink has lots of sugar successfully. Therefore, it helps people being aware of it, and people can avoid drinking soft drink much. People are easy to addict sugar, so reducing sugar intake is really important thing to be healthy and avoid being obesity. This image is also used to support ‘sugar tax’ that I already mentioned in post 1; 20% tax on sugary drinks and sweets to help people reduce their daily sugar intake.

Image 6. Sedentary Lifestyle is a Health Risk

The potato is on the couch in this image. This points out an increase in sedentary lifestyle today. Many people prefer convenience; therefore, people tend to find easier ways when they travel, go or do something. They do not have enough physical activities, so it would bring about health risk such as heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, and high blood pressure. Although this image describes sedentary lifestyle, it will lead to awareness to people.

Image 7. Urbanism as a public health issue: Oklahoma City’s battle with obesity

The silhouette of obese person is in front of many junk food shops. This illustration highlights urbanism as a public health issue, and it also says that urban environment should change for public health. I posted the design guidelines about this issue in post 4. This image shows the real environment that affects public health negatively. If there are less unhealthy food shops in our environment, it will definitely helpful to public health. However, there would be many objections by especially junk food and sugary food industry.

 

Image 8. Killer at Large

This image is a documentary poster. It includes the fries in the cigarette packet. People recognize how smoking cigarettes is harmful for the health. The image uses that common sense to let people realize how junk food is also as bad for our health as smoking.

 

Image 9. What are you letting your child put in his mouth?

This image is United Way + American Heart Association joint campaign poster. The poster has gun shape of the chocolate with the texts below it. It points out children obesity can be prevented by parent’s right diet education. The visual aspect and the phrase are appropriate to describe how right diet is important to children.

 

Image 10. Obesity is Suicide

This image is a campaign poster to raise awareness of obesity. This poster might be sensational, but it will make people to think that obesity affects their health negatively. Thus, people try to choose healthier choices, not unhealthy things.

 

 

Reference

Brown, V. 2015, Dove Real Beauty campaign, news, viewed 11 August 2016, <http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/face-body/study-claims-plussize-models-may-contribute-to-obesity-epidemic-and-unhealthy-lifestyle-choices/news-story/9742de8fb4ef04633b2a67681bf5d376&gt;.

Chill Out Point, 2009, “OBESITY IS SUICIDE” AD CAMPAGIN, viewed 20 August 2016, <http://www.chilloutpoint.com/art_and_design/the-best-of-ad-campaigns.html&gt;.

Ellis, M. 2016, Put the Smartphone down: social media use and sleep disturbances linked, MNT, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/305665.php&gt;.

 Greenstreet, S. 2008, Killer at Large, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903660/&gt;.

Hamid, S. 2010, United Way + AHA Anti-Obesity Campaign, Behance, viewed 20 August 2016, <https://www.behance.net/gallery/United-Way-AHA-Anti-Obesity-Campaign/438465&gt;.

Hochberg, A.T. 2015, Urbanism as a public health issue: Oklahoma City’s battle with obesity, Archinect, viewed 20 August 2016, <http://archinect.com/news/tag/206280/obesity&gt;.

Obesitysoc, 2015, Are You Eating Your Feelings?, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.obesitysoc.org.uk/images/Press_2015/Website2015/obesity_poster_eat_your_feelings_2.jpg&gt;.

Roderick, L. 2016, How Coca-Cola, Britvic and Innocent are tackling the sugar issue, Marketing Week, viewed 23 August 2016, <https://www.marketingweek.com/2016/01/27/how-coca-cola-britvic-and-innocent-are-tackling-the-sugar-issue/&gt;.

Stark, S. n.d. Disease trigger, A Stark Reality, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.astarkreality.com/2014/10/religious-fasting-can-exacerbate-eating.html&gt;.

Sullivan, R. n.d., Sedentary Lifestyle is a Health Risk, Sci-Unison Fitness, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.sci-unisonfitness.com/sedentary-lifestyle-health-risk/&gt;.

 

 

 

 

If you’re holding the gun, who is pressing the trigger?

Post three

By Marie Good

When considering the stakeholders of the issue of obesity and healthy living, you better clear your schedule for the next hour, make a cup of tea and have several large pieces of paper on standby to record all the major participants you can think of. The world of health is the world we live in every day and are unable to simply take a holiday from. As humans it is within us and around us every moment of our lives, which is precisely why everybody and everything we are, plays a part in how it functions in the bigger picture.

During a class exercise recently, I was required to do just that (minus the cup of tea, sadly). With my group we wrote down as many stakeholders as we could and positioned them in line of most important and influential to least. Gaining this overview we uncovered some insightful and surprising positioning within the list. Some stakeholders we had thought would be big players in the issue, when compared to others, were actually less important than those we initially considered less important. For example, economic position was deemed of higher influence than that of social media in its line of influence. This insight lead me to the idea that healthy living may just be a luxury for those with a socio-economic affordability for it, leaving the poorer to become poorer and unhealthier.

Furthering on in class we decided to plot out the relationships and connections between stakeholders which formed an intense web of lines, communicating how complex this issue is and how many influences have other influences via other stakeholders.

On leaving my class I decided to pursue this map and create my own, with particular focus on four crucial areas to draw connection between the groups and view any overlaps in influence. After listing initial stakeholders for the four main groups; emotional, medical, humans and environmental, I decided to pick an important word from each group and link it up with words from alternate groups. This mapping exercise further displays the complexity of the issue. I was interested to see though, how substantial the human and emotional group was in connection and influence with other stakeholders.

During a following class a week later, another mapping exercise was conducted but this time it was not concerning stakeholders only, but any word that could be related or influential to my topic. My group decided to divide our answers into five categories; education, expectation, support, role models and social to address the question of who and how these elements are formed. We also made subcategories listing who would use those words in everyday conversations. From this exercise I drew the conclusion of support being a crucial element to the recovery of a healthy lifestyle, however, not a readily available offering in today’s society.

 

Image archive

These 7 mobile apps will help you find GMO and additive-free foods by Healthy Holistic Living, 2016

This image displays an emergence between the food and produce market and portable technology. It is a representation of how two unlikely elements can be paired through their connecting feature of data to create a further efficient source of information for tracking, keepsake or other personal reasons. Unlike written understandings of this, the picture allows us to see and interpret how the technology is used in the real world.

 

Farmacy by Piraro, 2011

A comic styled image with a humorous and witty catch, this image draws the audience in by utilising their knowledge of generalised pharmacy perception, as a place of medication and healthy influence and highlights the importance of eating healthy regularly in keeping the body in a positive state. The use of humour furthers the audience’s connection with the image, unlike traditional written statements and explanations.

 

5 ways to get fit and healthy by Women of Substance, 2015

A powerful image displaying a female actor kicking a mountain of junk food. The food has been made bigger than her, to symbolise how large the struggle is to rid our lives of such things. Images like the one above plant an idea into the minds of the audience quite quickly and efficiently, without the use of words.

Microbiome by NaturalHealth365, 2016

Unless you’re a doctor or studying the human biome, our internal structures are not something we like or have to think about much. This image almost acts as an infographic or informative insight into our internal gut system and how gut inflammations are caused through our biome. It assists our understanding in guiding our minds creativity towards imagining this as explained in words.

 

How your gut flora prevents you from getting fat and sick by Natural Mentor, 2015

Another powerful image, quite scientific in nature, suggesting humans are predominantly created from DNA and our genetics. This emphasis placed on merging the two highly recognisable forms is effective and easy to understand.

 

Magical ways to control your health and fitness by GagaTrends, 2015

This image is actually used as a feature image for a previous blog post of mine on the same topic, post one. In this blog post I gave an overarching view of obesity and healthy living subjects presented in the Australian press. The reason behind this image choice is because the items presented in the image are associated with our first thoughts of the term healthy living.

 

10 facts about obesity, by eNews channel Africa, 2014

Another image I have used as a feature image displays an overweight child, positioned next to a pizza box and playing video games. This, unfortunately is one of the stereotypes younger generations of people have today when the term ‘gamer’ or ‘overweight’ are used. It’s effective in conveying an emotive and therefore engaging and successful image.

 

Augmented reality fitness games coming to tablets and phones by TechRadar, 2013

The emergence of technology and physical activity has become an idea that seems to be accelerating at speed into shaping the future. This image is an example of augmented reality doing just this and encouraging people to get off their couches while gaming, instead of sitting, as pictured in the image above.

 

Food additives and behaviours by Yummy Tuckers, 2014

The image above displays a quite literal representation of the chemicals and additives being placed into a common household breakfast item. It is effective in doing so as these chemicals are usually hidden quite well (even on the information and ingredient panel) and the general consumer is not consciously recognising they are in what they are eating.

Doesn’t work, does it? by Kevin Prezzi, 2016

It’s no secret that our society is over medicated and under enthused about life in general. This image heavily communicates how reliant humans, as a collective, are on the pharmaceutical market. It suggests we are full yet still consuming medications, toxins and drugs ‘off a silver spoon,’ as the saying goes.

 

Reference list

Augmented reality fitness games coming to tablets and phones, 2013, TechRadar, date viewed 19 August 2016, < http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/tablets/augmented-reality-fitness-games-coming-to-tablets-and-phones-1188130 >.

Doesn’t work, does it, 2016, Kevin Prezzi, date viewed 20 August 2016, < http://www.kevinpezzi.com/blog/steve-jobs_mel-gibson_cancer_appearance.php >.

Food aditives and behaviours, 2014, Yummy Tuckers, date viewed 20 August 2016, < http://www.yummytuckers.com.au/food-additives-and-behavior/ >.

How your gut flora prevents you from getting fat and sick, 2015, Natural Mentor, date viewed 19 August 2016, < http://naturalmentor.com/how-your-gut-flora-prevents-you-from-getting-fat-and-sick/ >.

Magical ways to control your health and fitness, 2015, GaGaTrends,  date viewed 20 August 2016, < http://www.gagatrends.com/magical-ways-to-control-your-health-and-fitness/ >.

Microbiome, 2016, NaturalHealth365, date viewed 20 August 2016, < http://www.naturalhealth365.com/microbiome-gut-inflammation-1857.html >.

Piraro, D. 2011, ‘Farmacy,’ Bizarro, date viewed 25 August 2015, < http://pioneersettler.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/farmacy.jpg >

These 7 mobile apps will help you find GMO and additive-free foods, 2016, Healthy Holistic Living,  date viewed 22 August 2016, < http://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/these-7-mobile-apps-will-help-you-find-gmo-and-additive-free-foods.html >

5 ways to get healthy, 2015.,  Women of substance, date viewed 22 August 2016, < http://www.womanofstyleandsubstance.com/5-ways-to-get-fit-and-healthy/ >.

10 facts about obesity, 2014, eNews channel Africa, date viewed 21 August 2016, < https://www.enca.com/10-facts-about-obesity >.

Type 1 Diabetes: Stakeholders & Visual Representation

Post 3 by Lucy Allen

When understanding and discovering any complex system the system can only be appreciated when attempting to map the stakeholders involved. It is only then that you can see the intricate web of players, their values and relationships and how they make up a larger system and influence each other. Stakeholder mapping alongside a collection of visual research has allowed me to appreciate these systems, their intricacies and portrayals through a visual format apposed to the written texts I have previously discovered.

Stakeholder Mapping

When asked to produce a stakeholder map in class on the topic of Obesity and Healthy Living it was quite daunting task. The system and stakeholders form such a complex web and we worried that we wouldn’t be able to cover every actor and relationship within the time and space constraints.In the end we were very happy with the map we produced, whilst not clear it is well thought out and conveys a basic overview of the stakeholder involved in the issue.

In-class Stakeholder Relationship Map for ‘Obesity & Healthy Living’

We were later asked to map stakeholders based on their values and relationships. This provided much more challenging as we really had to put ourselves in the shoes of each stakeholder and discuss their position in the grand scheme of things.

In-class Stakeholder Value Map for ‘Obesity and Healthy Living’

The two stakeholder maps we created in class was based on the overarching issue of ‘Obesity and Healthy Living’. As my research has led me into the quite specific topic of Type 1 Diabetes I wanted to take these two maps on relationships and values to create a more specific map of the topic, breaking this down into human and non-human players.

Stakeholder relationships and values for Type 1 Diabetes

Image Bank

When creating an image bank to reflect all that I have been researching and discussing I have really tried to find images that either depict some reality of living with Diabetes or allow me to challenge societal assumptions. Many of the images I’ve found cleverly reflect the treatment of Diabetes through the use of needles and other harsh means. It’s very easy to hide the treatment of Diabetes so I think that imagery and artworks are a great way for people to express their frustration and the more hidden aspects of the disease.

Despite the freedom of visuals to communicate I did find it difficulat to find any images that conveyed the overall experiene of what it is like to live with Type 1 Diabetes. I put this down to the silent nature of the disease in that people living with it look perfectly healthy and normal. Unlike Type 1, Type 2 is a bit easier to stereotype as seen in image 4, where those suffering are predominantly overweight. Due to this, I struggled to find imagery that could really reflect the experience of living with Type 1 Diabetes and not just a treatment or small aspect of it.

I feel these images reflect many of the issues I’ve previously talked about around the subject of Type 1 Diabetes however do so in a more lighthearted way than my textual sources have. It is amazing what can be communicated through an image and I feel a lot is said through the particular images I’ve chosen.

 

 

 

Image 1: Swiss-abetic Pen & Ink by Birdwing Press

 

This illustration is a unique way of looking at the various forms of treatment needed by those living with Type 1 Diabetes and highlighting just how much is needed.

Image 2: Jellybeans In a Jar by J. Tyler

This image represents the many assumptions made in regards to Type 1 Diabetes and sugar. Whilst sugar has a direct impact on blood sugar levels and eating it can make managing the disease harder, sugar can also save the life of someone living with Type 1 Diabetes.

 

Image 3: Complication of Diabetes Mellitus Type 1 from A Fair Go

This image is an example of the long-term complications poor Diabetes control can have. Few people realise the extend of these complications, amputation being just one.

 

Image 4: Diabetes Sucks by Noah Health 

This image reflects the stereotype of what most people associate with ‘Diabetes’. It can be hard for many people living with Diabetes to dispose of this generalisation of the disease, many people are taken-a-back when they realise that not all people with Diabetes are overweight and eat junk food 24/7.

Image 5: Newcastle Walk to Cure Diabetes by R Osland

This photo is of the Newcastle 2015 ‘Walk to Cure Diabetes’, an annual fundraiser run by JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) to raise money to fund further research into funding a cure for the disease.

 

Image 6: Icecream Cones by The Taable

This image from The Taable reflects the assumption that Diabetics must go without. That eating sugar was detrimental and is what cause our Diabetes. This view was something I came across countless times growing up until I learnt to stand up for myself and explain to people that I could in-fact eat that ice-cream and could in-fact eat that cake.

 

Image 7: Diabetes Art Day by M. Mokate

This untitled artwork by Nora Mokate depicts a woman handcuffed by the tubing of her insulin pump. This image is commenting on how whilst people living with Diabetes try their best to control the disease and live normal lives often it seemingly takes control, leaving you at the mercy of medicine and attempting control.

 

Image 8: Campaign Image by #NoPricks

This raw image is part of the #NOPRICKS campaign that seeks to eliminate needles for Diabetics through delivering insulin through a patch on the skin. The image depicts just one month’s worth of needles and is a reality for many people worldwide.

 

Image 9: Diabetic Fingertips found on Google Image Search

This image taken from a blog post by user DeviantArt depicts the worn fingertips of those living with Type 1 Diabetes due to testing blood sugar levels multiple times a day. This image is an example of how Diabetes has only a few small visible impacts but has many hidden ones.

Image 10: Diabetic Thirst by E. Loli

This image is titled ‘Diabetic Thirst’ and is a collage by Eugenia Loli. The work reflects the debilitating thirst felt by those living with Type 1 Diabetes when their blood sugar levels are high.

 

Reference List

A Fair Go, 2014, Diabetes Mellitus Type 1 – Complications, viewed 20th of August <2016, http://afairgo.net/diabetes-mellitus-type-one-complications/>

Birdwing Press, 2016, Etsy, viewed 19th of August 2016, <https://www.etsy.com/listing/96275838/swiss-abetic-pen-ink-diabetes?ref=cat_gallery_22&ga_search_query=Diabetes&ga_order=most_relevant&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=all&gt;

Deviant Art, Diabetic Fingertips, Google Images, viewed 20th of August 2016, <http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/91454971/&gt;

Loli, E., 2015, Diabetic Thirst, Tictail, viewed 20th of August 2016, <http://eugenialoli.tictail.com/product/diabetic-thirst&gt;

Mokate, M., 2014, Diabetes Art Day, Diabetes Daily, viewed August 20th 2016, <https://www.diabetesdaily.com/blog/2014/02/diabetes-art-day-2014/&gt;

Noah Health, 2016, Diabetes Sucks, Noah Health, viewed 20th of August 2016, <http://www.noahhealth.org/five-most-common-food-myths-associated-with-diabetes/#soc&gt;

NoPricks, 2014, Campaign Image, viewed 19th of August 2016, <http://www.nopricks.com/&gt;

Osland, R. 2014, ‘Walkers at the Newcastle Walk to Cure Diabetes’, Newcastle Herald, viewed 18th of August 2016, <http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2618848/thousands-walk-newcastle-for-diabetes/&gt;

The Taable, 2016, Icecream Cones, Pinterest, viewed 18th of August 2016, <thetaable.com>

Tyler, J., 2015, Jelly Beans in a Jar, Reference, viewed 19th of August 2016, <https://www.reference.com/math/calculate-jelly-beans-jar-6fd1770243a80db&gt;

Fast food and fast judgement; an interview

Fast food and fast judgement by Epoch Times, 2015

Post five

By Marie Good

Recently I was able to conduct an interview with a class peer of mine who provided me with some interesting insights into the way she views Australia’s health an obesity status. My interviewee is from China and due to this, her knowledge of Australia’s status was based primarily on her relation and experience with an Asian lifestyle. At the end of the interview I was interested in her personal position in regards to her food intake, due to her knowledge and access to a culturally different society than myself.

We firstly discussed her view on Australia’s health and obesity status in general which she considered was quite healthy because of it’s access to organic produce and ability to produce and market it’s own, home-grown food. However, she thought there might be a problem in regards to our junk food saturated market. On pushing this further it was revealed the real reason she developed these views is because of the amount of red meat and fatty, cholesterol contributing processed foods Australia consumes compared Asia. She also touched on the increasing amount of alternate, labelled lifestyles popping up vigorously of modern times such as veganism and vegetarian, continuing to state, ‘for me, I am from Asia and people there like to eat more vegetables, grains and not so much red meat. As a result I think this is reflected in their weight.’

Her answer was very interesting and led me into asking what this statement meant for her stereotype of an unhealthy person, which she responded to as someone who is fat. I consider this quite an interesting take on society’s perception of what it means to be unhealthy. For example, when it comes to matters of the metabolism, which is the major consideration factor for the influence of fat distribution in our human biology, many people think slim people with a lower body mass index (BMI) are at less risk of developing health complications. This is a debatable topic in regards to body types, genetics and our body’s individuality in the matter.

We moved onto the area of what need to be changed in order to alter the way Australia is heading with fast food markets on the rise. My interviewee answered that current fast food companies need to consider making the change to using healthier ingredients. I suggested the idea of healthy fast food chains as an option to which she did not see much success in, commenting that, ‘such a fast change would not be successful, this is why we should try implementing small changes to the system and hope for the best.’

Throughout our discussion it was evident my interviewee’s knowledge of the obesity and healthy living topic was based on her own personal experiences. It made me view each individual as having almost an umbrella of knowledge, mostly only extending towards what they have personally accepted within their life circumstances.

I followed the interview by assigning a research probe activity to my interviewee with the following tasks:

1. Keep a food diary for a day and record what you eat.
2. Draw or write a list of healthy and unhealthy foods and write why you think this way.

The results from this probe task displayed a fairly low calorie yet heavily processed diet, with much noodles and low GI foods, however medium amounts of protein and fats to promote feelings on content and fullness. The list generated for both healthy and unhealthy foods mainly showed my interviewees knowledge of ‘healthy’ as being associated with vitamins and energy production whereas unhealthy was associated with traditional Chinese thoughts, particularly on cold drinks being bad for women, fast food, high amounts of oils and a lack of fresh quality. One area of insight from this probe task was seeing ‘cake’ and rice listed under healthy due to its ability to create energy. This clashes with ideas I hold towards cake and rice, as nutritionally, this energy is sourced from insulin release associated with large amounts of high GI carbohydrates (such as sugar, predominantly). It’s further pondered my thinking into why individuals view healthy lifestyles the way they do, the reasons behind it and the associations they make.

Five key points from both of these exercises to summarise my findings are:

• Australia has a high junk food saturated market with too much heavy meat and not enough vegetables, unlike those of Asian countries
• Most people perceive being unhealthy as someone who is overweight
• In order to change the decline of Australia’s health and obesity status, fast food companies should undertake slow change to become more healthy and responsible towards their part in the problem.
• Individuals have almost an umbrella of knowledge, mostly only extending towards what they have personally accepted or experienced within their life circumstances
• Many people go by what others have told them are healthy and unhealthy foods but don’t go further into why this may be the case or how they have been classified in that way

 

Reference list

Epoch Times, 2015, The Western Diet Is So Unhealthy, It’s Affecting Our Eyes, Epoch Times, date viewed 27 August 2016, <http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1365599-the-western-diet-is-so-unhealthy-its-affecting-our-eyes/ >.

 Lam, Y., Y. 2016, pers. comm., 16 August.

Mapping the participants/ Image archive

Stakeholders and Relationships

Post 3: Mitchell Soames

When attempting to map out the stakeholders for Obesity and healthy living one starts to comprehend just how many people or tangible/ intangible contributors impact the issue holistically.

Through working in a small group we were able to identify an array of different influences. One key insight was our realisation that challenged our initial thoughts admitting to thinking that social media was the biggest influence of obesity and healthy living, yet it scaled quite low when compared to somewhat uncontrollable circumstances such as economic position, (this may cause you to think we really don’t know what we are talking about) but humour me for a second.

If you were not in the position to get access to a good sources of fresh produce one has no choice but to gravitate towards cheaper options, foods with low nutritional substance or fast food. Also depending on the area you are living in a local supermarket might not be as accessible.

A week later we were asked to produce another map, this time we included any word that could be related or influential to the topic. We received feedback from our tutors and peers and began to break down our 5 key contributor based on our own personal believes, these included (in order) Role models, Support, Expectations, Education, Social.

What  was interesting is that most of these contributors are relative to one another; for example expectations would go hand in hand with support and when you think of role models I think your family specifically your parents, not having these three aspects working together can really create a struggle in your judgement and motivation to prevent or combat obesity and/or live a healthy

10 Research Images

Food Design 2012 ‘You are what you eat’

This image was found on tumblr with little information or research behind it. I was particularly drawn to it because of its clever use of composition to represent a person by combining a selection of fast food sources with heavy carbohydrate foods. It is a common trend to target the ‘human image’ for example this character is clearly over-weight and emotively unhappy portraying a pessimistic view to the effects of unhealthy choices both physical and psychologically.

Lesage, D. 2014 ‘Obesity starts from childhood’ 

This  image was made by a Graphic designer named Karen Hurley and Art director David Lesage for a advertising campaign for French Ministry of Health to promote awareness of childhood obesity. Again this image targets body image using an indulging image of an ice-cream which is easily relatable for both children and adults.

Parker, J. ND ‘Global threat waiting area’

I found that comics illustrations are quite powerful in their ability to use comedy to represent a serious issues such as obesity. For example in this image our understanding of all three issues (Obesity, bird flu and global warming) are heavily impacting factors on humanity. Yet the most concerning problem in this image is obesity cleverly represented by a weight distribution and the emotions shown on each characters face.
This image shows the reality of obesity (far more concerning) than any alarming virus or environmental fear in relation to mortality.

Raeside, 2016 ‘Obesity and health care system’

This comic is by Raeside which do alot of illustrtions targeting Healthcare systems and the Government. I chose this one because it struck me instantly. labelling the scale as our Healthcare system represents the lack of support or attention to a major problem which is Obesity. With the character shown still holding a soft drink and a shirt titled ‘Obesity’ tells me that he himself is completely oblivious to the problem.
This image differs from the rest because it is the first time that the issue is not specific to an individual but targets a support system that is not doing its part in helping people in need.

Personal trainingSF 2012 ‘One of the best ways to lose stomach fat’

Finding this artwork on a 42 ways to lose fat page didn’t give me a lot of insight to this image so I decided to dig deeper. I found that it is actually an advertising campaign for Companhia Athletica, ran by São Paulo whom collaborated with Brazilian advertising agency DM9 DDB on a set of captivating ads to motivate obese people to lose weight. There is a series of the same style silhouette characters with fit and athletic bodies imprisoned inside.
This is the first image that I can see the two (over-weight and fit) subjects used in contrast expressing the intrinsic belief that wants change as a physical element.

Katie Couric 2014 ‘Fed Up’

This image was incredibly educational using a simple comparison to effectivvely communicate the ‘hidden’ sugars in different  products.  The purpose is to open people’s eyes to products which may seem harmless because of its use, yet by contrasting them with a product that one could assume is loaded with sugar/ unhealthy can lead to somone having a changed perspective with their food section

Ahfon, 2008 ‘Anti-obestiy campaign’

I found this image to be the first one that represented an obesity treatment with a negative connotation suggesting that children have no choice but to be shaped into something that is more ‘perfect’ in appearance. Also the language is very in-formal using slang such as ‘fatty’ to single out the children, which are shown in a distressing manner.

DRL: Heart 2010 ‘Don’t treat Diabetes to your heart.’

This advertisement was quite similar to my second image again targeting sweets and associating ice-cream with something that is loaded with sugar. Where it differs is the directed cause/ impact showing the heart as a heavily effected organ.
Unlike my other images this one uses text to resonate with its audience “People with diabetes are 2 to 4 times likely to get heart disease” further reassuring the issue.

Granlund, G. 2012 ‘World wide obesity’

This image is unique as it targets a broad scale, combining the world with a human which seems to be ignoring the obvious weight problem. The text prompts a reaction with an alarming 30% increase of obesity it seems this image is communicating a lack of acknowledgement of a serious issue world wide.

 

Piraro, D. 2014 Then, sometime after the invention of home computers, things began (…)

I feel that this image was the first to suggest technology as a major problem in relation to weight-gain. Relying on humour in both the text and using the  human evolution ending in an obese figure proposes a projection of our future if we as humans let technology take control of our livelihood.

 

REFERENCES

Food Design 2012 ‘You are what you eat’  viewed 25 August 2016 <http://artpixie.tumblr.com/post/26297901007&gt;

Lesage, D. 2014 ‘Obesity starts from childhood’ 2014– knowing your portions’ viewed 25 August 2016 <http://www.davegranlund.com/catoons/2012/07/24/world-obesity/&gt;

Parker, J. ND ‘Global threat waiting area’ viewed 26 August 2016  <https://collaborationnation.wikispaces.com/file/view/parker.gif/33093359/parker.gif&gt;

Raeside, 2016 ‘Obesity and health care system’ viewed 26 August 2016  <http://raesidecartoon.com/vault/obesity-health-care-system/&gt;

Personal trainingSF 2012 ‘One of the best ways to lose stomach fat’– knowing your portions’ viewed 26 August 2016 <http://personaltrainingsf.com/top-42-ways-to-lose-belly-fat-fast&gt;

Katie Couric 2014 ‘Fed Up’viewed 28 August 2016 <http://blogs.babycenter.com/products_and_prizes/the-film-the-food-industry-doesnt-want-you-to-see/&gt;

Ahfon, 2008 ‘Anti-obestiy campaign’ viewed 28 August 2016 <http://blog.omy.sg/ahfon/archives/52&gt;

DRL: Heart 2010 ‘Don’t treat Diabetes to your heart.’viewed 28 August 2016 <http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/drl_heart&gt;

Granlund, G. 2012‘World wide obesity’ viewed 28 August 2016 <http://www.davegranlund.com/catoons/2012/07/24/world-obesity/&gt;

Piraro, D. 2014 Then, sometime after the invention of home computers, things began (…) viewed 28 August 2016 <http://www.thecomicstrips.com/subject/The-Obese+Weight+Loss-Comic-Strips-by-Bizarro.php&gt;

China’s Smog: An Interview and Probe

Post 5 by Lucy Allen

For someone living with Type 1 Diabetes it’s really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that everyone knows and understands the disease and if not, that they should. This somewhat arrogant view was challenged when undertaking an interview and probing activity as part of design-led ethnography.

I devised four probing questions that I hoped would open up discussion and allow my interviewee to really articulate their assumptions, knowledge and understanding of Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. My hope for these questions was that I could develop a better understanding of how people view those living with Type 1 Diabetes and the assumptions they make. 

My probing questions:

1. What comes to mind when I say Diabetes?
2. Do you have any experience with Diabetes? Say with family, friends, peers?
3. What type of body do you associate with Diabetes?
4. If you were diagnosed with Diabetes today how do you think your life would change?

I wasn’t however prepared for if my partner had no previous experience or knowledge of Type 1. Quite naively it hadn’t even crossed my mind that this was a possibly, perhaps because to me it is so normal and day-to-day. Once realising my questions were too tricky for someone that knows nothing about the disease I began trying to adapt my questions to make them a little broader whilst also explaining a bit about Type 1 to my partner. I realised after my partner very apologetically couldn’t answer my questions that my interview would have to take a different path. 

With some help from my tutor I was able to delve into my partners own experience with health and wellbeing, particularly in relation to his birth country, China. I asked him questions about Chinese culture and the health of people over there and he informed me of the smog in China and how this has a enormous impact on the health and wellbeing of the Chinese. The most interesting thing I learnt throughout the process was that the smog in China is so thick that at the end of a day when people take their masks off, the filters have black sludge on them. I found it hard to imagine when my partner told me this, we are so used to clean fresh air here in Australia and it really made me appreciate this.

It was a really eye-opening experience to carry out an interview that was so different to the one I’d played out in my head. It was a fantastic experience for me learning to think on my feet and ask probing questions. What eventuated was me not so much learning about the area I was focused on but being engaged and enlightened in a much more personal and interesting topic to my partner that in turn informed and engaged me.

Some interesting points I took away from my interview are

• There is a bigger focus in China on Cancer as a leading health issue apposed to Diabetes
• Air Quality is seen as a big threat to the health of the Chinese
• The ‘smog’ effects lungs, teeth, skin and general ability to exercise and be outside
• Government has attempted to fix to smog but it as seen as a helpless situation, very few people have hope it will ever change
• There is a focus on physical health apposed to invisible e.g. Amputated limbs vs. mental health disease

When deciding on a probing activity for my partner to undertake it was tempting at first to focus on increasing his knowledge of Type 1 Diabetes. In the end however I appreciated that my interview had taken use down a different path and that this was now an opportunity for me to learn more about China and their healh and wellbeing. I started out with quite complex and time-consuming probing tasks however was advised to keep these simple so as not to make the task feel like a chore.

Smog in Beijing (Huffington Post, 2015)

My probing exercise:

1. Undertake 3 x 10minute research sessions on the health of China. Record any interesting points and health terms
2. Write out how the life of Chinese people would be different if the smog disappeared

The outcomes I received from this activity were really fantastic. It was amazing how when somebody can relate to an issue or is passionate about it how it inspires them to throw themselves into a task. Being able to access Chinese news and website my partner was then able to translate many of the statistics and research for me, invaluable information. It was also really great to see health terms highlighted clearly, this really informed the associative word task we undertook the following week.

An great extract from my partners research. Translated Chinese health statistics with highlighted health terms

When reading my partners response to what would change if the smog in China didn’t exist I suddenly realised how interlinked the smog and health are. As my partner pointed out that alongside the health risks, the smog has additional physical and emotional effect on people. It stops the Chinese from spending time outside and exercising as well as blocking the sun meaning most days and grey and dull. Being informed of this issue that is so foreign to us was really incredible and I feel lucky to have learnt so much from my partner and his access to relevant information. 

Chinese News Source my partner used as part of my probe activity

Looking back on the interview process some part of me wishes I had been better prepared with broader probing questions however at the same time I am so happy with how the process evolved and the path it took. I have learnt so much and been engaged in a totally new realm of health that I wouldn’t have been otherwise. In saying that I would have liked to do some more unique and creative probing exercises. Due to the nature of the topic the interview led us to it was hard to come up with fun and original tasks to give to my partner. In this particular circumstance I do think that the probing exercises turned out well and really benefited both my partner and I.

Reference List

English, A.J, 2015, “Inside Story – China’s Pollution Dilemma”, Youtube, viewed 23rd of August 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYzedoKTx3Q&gt;

Hunt, K., Lu, S., “Smog in China Closes Schools and Constructions Site, Cuts Traffic in Beijing”, CNN, viewed 22nd of August 2016, <http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/07/asia/china-beijing-pollution-red-alert/&gt;

NTDonChina, 2013, Top Health Expert Says China’s Smog “Scarier than SARS”, Youtube, viewed 24th of August 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsCfzAncWLk&gt;

Needle Free Blood Glucose Testing

Post 4 by Lucy Allen

In the recent blog post Truths of Type 1 Diabetes I explored the emotional and social impact living with Type 1 Diabetes and a lack of support can have. Tackling these social issues requires a long-term intervention and strategies to ensure a better support network and management for diabetics.  There are however many exciting and fast-paced innovations in the field of Type 1 Diabetes that make living with the disease a littler easier for people like myself.

A common issue faced by people living with Type 1 Diabetes is the large amount of needles used day to day. Between injections, blood glucose tests and site insertions Diabetics use over 3000 needles a year. There are options these days in regards to injecting insulin in the form of an insulin pump, decreasing 5 – 10 injections a day to just one needle insertion every three days however testing your blood glucose level (BGL) is imperative in the proper management of Type 1 Diabetes and is done so by pricking your finger with a needle to draw blood for reading by a metre multiple times a day.

Testing your BGL  (G. Matej, 2015)

Just recently Abbott have released the first needle-free BGL monitoring system called The FreeStyle Libre Flash. This system works by inserting a sensor into the upper arm that can be scanned using the monitor to receive not only a BGL but also detecting patterns and trends. This breakthrough technology is the first of it’s kind in offering needle free testing, providing ease of use and making living with Type 1 Diabetes just a little bit easier. Abbot have very effectively engaged with a major issue for those living with Type 1 that is in no way a cure but rather explores a major detriment of the disease and developed the appropriate technology in response. Whilst this technology doesn’t completely obliterate the use of needles as the sensors insertion still requires a needle, it drastically decreases the use of them and enables easier and more user-friendly BGL testing.

The FreeStyle Libre System (Abbott, 2016)

Whilst it’s clear Abbott have very successfully engaged and provided a solution to this issue there are still social barriers the deter people such as myself from using this new system. The system is usable whilst swimming, showering, exercising and in most day to day situations. Despite so many benefits, for me the idea of having another thing attached to me in addition to my insulin pump is a big turn off. With an insulin pump, the site and pump can sit comfortable and discreetly under my clothing however with the Libre it is inserted on the upper arm in clear view. For someone such as myself who lives in the sun and at the beach, the thought of the sensor being so blatantly obvious really deters me as it screams ‘there’s something wrong with me’. For me I would rather keep using needles to prick myself, draw blood and test my BGL to avoid this more intrusive technology.

It’s clear that whilst Abbott have provided an emergent solution to an ongoing issue there are still further areas of engagement that need to tackle the more social aspects surrounding the Libre. This project is however a fantastic example of all the exciting and emergent outcomes that are coming to fruition as technology improves and issues surrounding health and obesity are explored. My hope is that we can continue to develop, test and respond to these innovations in a way that allows people living with Type 1 to feel more ‘normal’ as some might say.

References

Abbott, ‘Free Style Libre’, accessed 20th of August 2016, < http://www.freestylelibre.com.au/&gt;

G, Matej., 2016, ‘What is Normal Blood Sugar Level’, accessed 23rd of August 2016, <http://healthiack.com/health/what-is-normal-blood-sugar-level&gt;

Augmented reality to the rescue

Augmented reality by Dezeen 2013

Post four

By Marie Good

 

When we see a problem within our community or the lives of others, it’s easy to feel helpless for a moment. We consider the situation, how small we are in comparison to the world and simply turn a blind eye when the realisation is too much and our own micro lives start flooding back into centre stage. It takes a different kind of attitude to evoke change. Firstly, the individual or group must identify a who and how for their why. Over the last few weeks I have been uncovering insights into the injustices and inequities towards healthy living attitudes. In particular I have discovered the emergence of augmented reality and education systems to change worldly perceptions and attitudes towards healthy living.

Augmented reality (AR) is a term created by Professor Tom Caudell in 1990 (Lass 2015) to define a recreation of reality that has been altered with overlaid graphics. Unlike virtual reality, AR stands alone as it utilises real existing environments, allowing the audience to be connected and influenced to it, through the device.

One area AR is proving to be increasingly revolutionary is in the area of healthcare. ARnatomy (Carson 2015) is a term used to describe the emergence of these two sectors. HELPlightning is an ARnatomy concept that does just that. Utilising two screens, HELPlightning connects the camera data from one screen to the camera data of another screen, overlaying the two images and essentially acting like a modern day remote support system.

Present presence by Help lightning 2016

The system involves two users at it’s current development state, one who has a visual problem and a responder who has the knowledge but not access to be physically present to assist in the situation. The creators of HELPlightning, thanks to the statistics provided by the British Journal of Clinical Psychology realised the power of statistics and turned the discovery of nonverbal cues being 430% more effective than verbal cues into a design solution for existing problems.

Present presence by Help lightning 2016

Along with its direct application to healthcare and education, HELPlightning has the capacity to completely replace remote assist technologies such as those used on computer systems currently where authority is given to another party to do a complete system takeover. Potentially it could be used in long distance education, to make customer help lines quicker, and even save lives in remote areas where emergency medical assistance is not available. It works to maximise speed, quality, satisfaction and experience and minimise delay, cost and waste.

 

 

Reference list

Carson, E. 2015, 6 cool uses for augmented reality in healthcare, Tech Republic, date accessed 20 August 2015, < http://www.techrepublic.com/article/6-cool-uses-for-augmented-reality-in-healthcare/ >.

Dezeen, 2013, ikea launches augmented reality catalogue, Dezeen, date accessed 21 August 2016, < http://www.dezeen.com/2013/08/05/ikea-launches-augmented-reality-catalogue/ >.

Help Lightning Inc. 2016, how it works, date accessed 21 August 2016, < https://www.helplightning.com/how-it-works >.

Lass, W. 2015, The future of augmented reality: limitations, possibilities and hopes, Emerging Tech, date accessed 20 August 2016, < http://www.emergingedtech.com/2015/07/future-of-augmented-reality-limitations-possibilities-hopes/ >.

The Active Design Guidelines for healthy living

Blog Post 4. Identifying and collecting a design example

Written by Hyunjoung You

 

While I wrote blog post 2, I could obtain useful information that is related to the association between obesity and food advertising. Blog post 2 gave me opportunity to think how our environment affects our healthy living once again. Therefore, I looked back the issue of obesity and healthy living, and thought what we can do for this issue as a designer. I believed the most effective design for obesity and healthy living is good urban design. Urban design is the closet factor to people today, so urban design might influence public health positively if it is well designed to let people choose healthier choices.

Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design

I found ‘The Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design’ is introduced by The New York City Departments of Design and Construction (DDC), Health and Mental Hygiene, Transportation (DOT), and City Planning. The Active Design Guidelines (2010) states the problems of obesity and with it type 2 diabetes are getting worse rapidly in New York City. It is caused by population’s over-consumption of calories, which is formed by the built environment in which we live, work, and play. The Guidelines aim to encourage physical activity by providing appropriate design of environment such as promoting stair climbing, walking, bicycling, transit use, active recreation, and healthy eating.

Summer Streets is a program of the NYC Department of Transportation in which designated routes are temporarily closed to motor vehicles and opened to people for walking, bicycling, running, and exercising over multiple weekends. Park Avenue

Research has suggested that greater land use mix is correlated with lower obesity. Partial land use male of New York City, showing the intense mix of land uses in the city.

 

Reference

 

City of New York, 2010, The Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design, viewed 18 August 2016, <https://centerforactivedesign.org/dl/guidelines.pdf&gt;

 

Perkins+Will, 2011, ‘A New Design Movement That Can Help Us Beat Obesity’, Fast Co Design, viewed 20 August 2016, <http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663272/a-new-design-movement-that-can-help-us-beat-obesity&gt;

Post 4: IMAX Shift® – The Next Great Fitness Movement.

Written by Meiying Lin

IMAXShift® is a new immersive group cycling studio powered by The IMAX Experience® base in America. The studio used the best techniques that exist in experience design and used that technique to change people’s exercise experience. Their first studio opened in Brooklyn, New York a few months ago. The aim of the studio is to encourage people to do exercise and to gain an excited experience while they workout.
Nowadays, many people not interest/dislike exercise because exercise makes them feel bored. Just thinking about exercising in a gym is enough to send many people back to the couch. In addition, lack of exercise is one of the main reason causes obesity rate growth. A research shows that obesity rate in America has doubled in children and has increased by 400% in adolescents over the past 30 years. It is obvious to see a regular gym is not appealing to most people. People dislike exercise is because they get bored.

“Let The IMAX Experience® change the way you think about fitness. Crystal clear audio surrounds you as sharp, hyperreal visuals suck you into the massive screen. A unique ride that leaves you breathless before you even break a sweat.”

To deal with this situation, IMAXShift decided upgraded the regular spin class with an IMAX screen and design to provide people with an immerse moving-going cycling workout experiences. The studio combines video, music, and exercise to help transport people working out to another world like they were in a virtual reality.

Studio room design

The studio room has been designed with 40×34 feet big screen curving around the front of the room and equipped with a 7.1-channel surround-sound system that includes two huge subwoofers built right into the floor. There are 50 Schwinn stationary bikes in the room and the instructor would be on a bike at the front left side of the room, wearing an amplified headset to give user instructions and encouragement. Beyond that, each Schwinn stationary bike has an individual console that allows the user to adjust speed, resistance, and power after every ride, user’s progress will be uploaded to their individual online account automatically from class-to-class. Instructors can provide help and encouragement to surpass user’s fitness goals base on their training record.

“A full sensory workout can create a heightened sense of anticipation as participants “ride” through fantastic landscapes like outer space or dream-like scenarios. By suspending belief, people are thinking less about the workout, as they push themselves further through the experience.”

Music Reactive Visuals

Even the studio uses the IMAX technology, they are not delivering a real movie to the user. The user won’t be watching a real movie like Star war, X-man, Superman or The Jungle Book while they are exercising. Instead of delivering a real movie, the ImaxShift® used a series of short video segments which had been handcrafted by each individual instructor. For instance, an experience allows the user to soar over the coasts of Hawaii; an experiences allows the user to pedal to the beat with music reactive visuals, etc. More importantly, each class is different and unique, each short video segment would only be played once. The user will never see the same video segment twice and they will have a completely new acoustic and optic experiences that perfectly complements the workout every time!

IMAXShift® is an undoubted successful entertainment and experience design. Although they only provide cycling activity at present, its still open up a range of new option of a future fitness and encourage lots of young adults to try this immersive workout experience. With an IMAX technology and unique experiences with IMAXShift®, exercise has become more engaged and more interesting. More and more young adults and adults would like to try IMAXShift® and continues to IMAXShift® to workout. A record show some studios have also begun incorporating immersive experiences have seen as much as a 25% increase in attendance. Clearly, there has been a growing consumer demand for more engaging exercise experiences, and immersive fitness is meeting it. I am looking forward to having a studio like this in Australia!

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References:

1. MAXShift 2016, The experience, IMAX Corporation, viewed 20 August 2016, < https://imaxshift.com/ >.

2. CBS News 2016, IMAX takes supersized experience to fitness industry, News Article, CBS Interactive Inc, viewed 20 August 2016, <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/imax-takes-supersized-experience-to-fitness-industry-indoor-cycling-studio/>.

3. Alton, E. 2016, Could Immersive Fitness Be the Cure for Obesity?, News Article, Entertainment Designer, viewed 20 August 2016, <http://entertainmentdesigner.com/news/experiences/could-immersive-fitness-be-the-cure-for-obesity/>.

POST 3: My Words & Image Archives in Obesity and Healthy Living: Mapping the Participants & Images I felt touched

Written by Meiying Lin

♥ Words Archives

The images below are the Stakeholders maps we developed in our group, the issue we are working on is Obesity and Healthy Living. This exercise provides us a good opportunity to explore more stakeholders related to our issue, and the relationship between the stakeholders. The aim of these maps is to clear up what we got and to help developing our own proposal.

(click the images to see the full version)

Obesity & Healthy Living Stakeholders (non-humans & humans)

Base on the Stakeholders map above, we created a chart to list the effective level of elements that could influence obesity, and a chart to list some words from negative to positive.

1 – 10 : More Important – Less Important.

Effective Level of Elements in obesity

Negative to Positive

Within this exercise, I found out designer plays an important role in obesity. To encourage obesity, designer helps fast food companies to create posters and advertisements on social media; To prevent obesity, designer invents active design to push people to do more physical activities. Even though there are plenty of reasons and elements that can affect obesity, the designer is always a key stakeholder in obesity and healthy living.

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♥ Image Archives

The images below are some designer posters and illustrations that encourage people to keep away from obesity. My collection of images show designers/illustrators has done a lots of works to against obesity.

Image 01

Illustration by John Holcroft

This illustration uses a visual simile to show teenager spent plenty of time in computer/video games every day. The roots under the boy represent the boy has been sat and play games for a long time. If we look at the illustration carefully, we will find out the boy have a fat waist and fat arms. To spend plenty of time each day directly causes a result of a lack of exercising.

The illustrator is trying to convey the harm of allowing the teenager to play computer/video games for a long time without an appropriate exercise, it is one of the main reasons why teenage obesity rate is keep growing nowadays.

Image 02

Poster, He trusts you with his life. Prevent Childhood obesity.

This poster creates a typography children with a bunch of unhealthy/fast food words such as pie, milkshake, and chips to imply children’s eating habit. Childhood obesity has become a serious issue nowadays, parenting and family eating habit is the main reason that causes childhood obesity.

‘He trusts you with his life.’ Children usually eat what his parents gave; Children don’t have the ability to acknowledge food he ate is healthy or unhealthy; Children don’t have the ability to aware if he is becoming or already became obese. The parent plays an important role in children’s eating habit. To prevent childhood obesity, parents must become a good role model and guide them to eat healthy food.

Image 03

Kindergarten Obesity, illustration by Kristian Hammerstad

Again, parenting and family eating habits play an important role in childhood obesity. In addition, this illustration also warms people that mothers who eat junk food during pregnancy and while breastfeeding has obesity-prone children. Within this illustration, the mother feed a slice of pizza to the baby. This is a horrible action, it usually won’t happen in real life.

However, lots of research suggests that pregnant and breastfeeding women should not indulge in fatty, sugary and salty foods under the misguided assumption that they are “eating for two.” Lots of women are not aware this potential risk while they are pregnant and breastfeeding, and this causes childhood obesity rate growth.

Image 04

Poster: Live Longer by World Health Eat Responsibly Organization

This poster was created by World Health Eat Responsibly Organization. This poster uses a visual metaphor of a person trying to use a banana to cut himself to convey a message that health food won’t kill people, on the other hand, junk food will.

As we all know, junk food contains overmuch sugar, salt, and fat, which can make people become obese and cause chronic disease such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, etc. The aim of this poster is to tell people to get healthy food and stay away from junk food for our own health.

Image 05

Movie Poster, Killer at Large

This is a poster of a documentary called ‘Killer at Large’ directed by Steven Greenstreet, and published in 2008 in America. This documentary was an overview of the political, social effects and problems associated with the rising epidemic of American obesity. The poster itself used a cigarette case to pack the chips and convey a message that chips (junk food) is as much harm as smoking, they both caused chronic disease and cancer in people.

I think the aim of this poster and movie is to point out even smoking and having junk food both caused health issues, people and the American government still haven’t taken any serious action to control it like smoking.

Image 06: Poster, It’s Scary what we put in our bodies

This poster use junk food, sweet, and soda drinks to create a devil face to warn people these foods are not good for health. ‘it’s scary what we put in our bodies’. I like this poster because the devil face looks exaggerated, which created a sense of humor.

The aim of this poster is to prevent people from having junk food, sweet, and soda drinks for health. Again, junk food, sweet, and soda drink contains overmuch sugar, salt, and fat, which can make people become obese and cause chronic disease such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, etc.

Image 07

Poster, Obesity in America Awareness

This poster was created by OAC (Obesity Action Coalition). This poster uses yellow and black colours to attract people’s attention and create a sense of seriousness.

It is obvious to see the aim of this poster, there are three black men within this poster, two of them are obese, and the texts below said ‘Two in three Americans are obese.’ and ‘ Obesity in linked to more than sixty chronic diseases.’ The aim is to point out the serious issue of obesity rate in America and to let obese people know the harm of keep being obese.

Image 08

Poster, Fighting Against Obesity

This poster is for a campaign for motivating action against obesity in the United Kingdom. As we all know, obesity is a worldwide issue and obesity can cause various chronic diseases. Instead of keeping warm people how much danger of being obese and/or counting how many people in the world are obese, this poster use love to encourage obese people to lose weight.

‘It’s not about size, it’s about ♥.’Plenty of obese people don’t want to lose weight. Some people think they are fine and they are happy with their size; Some people want to lose weight, but they don’t have a motivation, or just being lazy. But to tell those people to lose weight for the ones they love is a tempting motivation.We all want to do something for the ones we love. I found this poster very touched, and I like how this poster friendly suggest obese people lose weight, such as using the words ‘taking care of yourself’ instead of ‘get a weight loss’ and using the word ‘size’ instead of ‘fat’.

Image 09

A Series of Obesity Awareness, Poster by Kershin Lee

Again, obesity is a worldwide issue. This poster is designed by a Malaysian designer, named Kershin Lee, for ‘another size’ obesity Awareness Campaign. According to research, Malaysians are NOT very concerned about their eating habits, especially during festive seasons (Lee, K. 2012).. Kershin’s idea was to use jeans to deliver a message that holiday and festive do not give you a reason to be overeating. Overeating will cause obesity matter of fact, and 2 in 5 Malaysians were already obese.

I love this poster because of its warm colour tone and its vector style. A colourful poster can attract people’s attention easily and a vector style character can create a sense of humour. To deliver a serious message in a tactful way makes this message become more acceptable for more peoples.

Image 10

BEAT THE SWEETS! Poster by Comic Company

This cute poster is designed by Comic Company. The target audiences of this poster are children and parents. The aim of this poster is to encourage children to eat more healthy fruit and eat fewer sweets. Again, childhood obesity is a serious issue nowadays, children’s eating habit is one of the main reasons that cause obesity. To encourage children to eat more healthy fruit and vegetable is the most effective way to against childhood obesity.

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Image References:

1. Holcroft, J. 2014, How Completely Nuts Modern Life Has Become, illustration, viewed 19 August 2016, <https://www.good.is/slideshows/modern-life-articles>.

2. He trusts you with his life. Prevent Childhood obesity, n.d, poster, viewed 19 August 2016, <https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/17/6e/e9/176ee90f5abf0880b20c1320919942ad.jpg>.

3. Hammerstad, K. n.d, Kindergarten Obesity, illustration, viewed 19 August 2016, <http://www.kristianhammerstad.com/#editorial>.

4. World Health Eat Responsibly Organization, 2011, Live Longer, poster, viewed 19 August 2016, <http://eatnexercise.tumblr.com/post/3978823106>.

5. Killer at Large, 2008, movie poster, viewed 19 August 2016, <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903660/>.

6. Create a Movement, n.d, It's Scary what we put into our bodies, poster, viewed 19 August 2016, <https://au.pinterest.com/pin/310818811766139888/>.

7. Shinkard, A. n.d, Obesity in America Awareness, poster, viewed 19 August 2016, <http://www.aaronslinkard.com/Obesity-in-America-Awareness-Poster>.

8. Fighting against obesity, 2014, poster, viewed 19 August 2016, <https://au.pinterest.com/pin/413557178254640290/>.

9. Lee, K. 2012, A series of obesity awareness posters, poster, viewed 19 August 2016, <https://kershinillustrator.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/design-process-obesity-infographic-poster-awareness-campaign/>.

   Comic Company, n.d, ‘BEAT THE SWEETS POSTER’, poster, viewed 19 August 2016, <http://www.comiccompany.co.uk/?category=2&collection=244&code=748>.